Sun in the top of the tall tulip poplar—yellow crowning yellow. The last nighttime cricket falls silent. Off through the thinning woods, new chinks of sky.
fall foliage
Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof.
Cool and still with murky sunlight and yellow leaves dropping one by one. From the north and east, the guttural hum of industry—that drone note.
Cool and quiet at sunrise. A hummingbird circles the space where a nectar feeder hung years ago. A black cherry tree at the woods’ edge is turning orange.
Cool and clear at sunrise. A yellow walnut leaf rests on the end table instead of a book. The slow motor of a bumblebee.
Deep cold. The sound of wind mingling with the dull howl of distant jets. Two dead leaves pick this moment to finally let go and twirl up through their small oak into the clouds.
Blue-gray layered with yellow-orange a half hour past sunrise. The creek is still singing about Tuesday’s rain, and the one oak at the woods’ edge that always holds onto its dead leaves hisses in the wind.
Wet and overcast at sunrise. The forest floor with its carpet of leaves almost glows for a minute or two before subsiding into ordinary brown.
Sun through thin, high clouds—enough to make the last few scarlet oak crowns glow. An ambulance wails through the gap.
The sun clears the ridge and I’m blinded—the oaks are mostly bare now. Those that aren’t, glow red like a scattering of old barns.
As the moonlight fades, pale patches remain—a killing frost. The woods’ edge is nearly bare of leaves below the brick-red crowns of the oaks.
Dark at sunrise, but only a sprinkle of rain. Up in the woods, a deer rustles through freshly fallen leaves, breakfasting on acorns.
Sunrise: pink and orange in the sky as on the hillside. A white-breasted nuthatch punctuates a white-throated sparrow’s song.
Clear and cold with a heavy inversion layer: sparrow sounds blend with beeping quarry trucks. In the dim light, all the autumn colors look like blood.